This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Ambassador Harriet Babbitt, Deputy Administrator
Regional Legal Advisors Luncheon
Washington, D.C., March 24, 1998
U.S. Agency for International Development
Thank you, Singleton. It's a special pleasure to
meet with USAID's legal advisors from the field.
Since this is the first time I've met most of you, I want
to introduce myself to you, share some of my early
impressions about the agency and describe some of the
areas I expect to focus on as Deputy Administrator --
areas that I suspect will intersect with your own "focus
issues."
As most of you know by now, I am a lawyer,
mother and spouse with a long-held interest and varied
experience in international relations and in developing
and transition countries.
Before joining USAID on December 1, I served as
the U.S. Permanent Representative to the Organization
of American States (OAS). I had the opportunity to
play a role in U.S. efforts to further Latin America's
remarkable and ongoing consolidation of democracy
and economic reform. I focused on several major
issues, including facilitating OAS reform, negotiating a
regional anti-corruption convention and engineering
telecommunications standards of key importance to
U.S. businesses. I also was involved in coordinating
OAS implementation of initiatives endorsed at the
Summit of the Americas in Miami in December 1994.
Before joining the Clinton Administration, from
1988 until 1993 I served as a board member of the
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
(NDI), where I chaired the Latin America committee.
In addition to extensive Western Hemisphere
experience, my service with NDI provided me an
opportunity to participate in democratic initiatives in
Central Europe and Africa. It also provided my first
opportunity to work with Secretary Madeleine Albright
and Administrator Brian Atwood. Earlier, from 1974
to 1992, I was a practicing attorney in Phoenix.
During the past four-and-a-half years, observing
USAID from the OAS, I was amazed at the Agency's
resiliency. USAID has emerged from a protracted
series of traumas -- including severe budget cuts, a
reorganization, efforts to entirely eliminate the agency,
reinvention and a reduction-in-force. The entire
Washington staff also moved into new quarters. For
those of you accustomed to moving half-way across the
world every few years, that may not seem very
traumatic, I know. But you also know that even the
best of moves can be very stressful.
We are now getting past simple survival. Brian
said recently that for the first time in the five years he
has been at USAID, he can now actually devote most of
his energy to development and humanitarian relief. I
hope that my presence here helps to make that possible.
In the few months I have been at USAID, I have
come to understand why the agency has survived.
Clearly, Brian deserves much of the credit. Friends
and foes of foreign assistance agree that he has been
one of USAID's most effective leaders ever. He has
shown tremendous courage and conviction through very
difficult times.
I'm also starting to realize why Brian and the
people throughout this Agency care so much about
maintaining our nation's commitment to foreign aid. I
can't imagine a more important cause, or one more
critical to U.S. foreign policy goals, than that mission.
The importance of USAID's mission really hit
home during the my visit to Africa shortly after I came
to the Agency. I visited the our USAID programs in
Eritrea, Ethiopia and Mozambique. Seeing our work in
each of those places helped me understand why so
many people say that USAID's comparative advantage
is its field presence.
That advantage was even clearer as I attended the
Common Agenda meetings in Tokyo and then met with
Asian Development Bank President Sato and Philippine
officials last week. We discussed issues from the Asian
financial crisis to global warming -- which is one of the
areas Brian has asked me to take the lead on.
After the meetings were over, I was able to travel
down the Philippine coast and see USAID projects in
action -- improving the health of people and protecting
coastal and ocean resources.
We also visited an innovative seaweed project in
the village of Sulu, part of the Emergency Livelihood
Assistance Program. That program helps men and
women, particularly former MNLF combatants and
their families, to rebuild their lives after years of war.
I was impressed with the program and the hope it
has given the participants. It is allowing the people to
begin to get on with their lives as part of the civilian
economy. It also helps to turn them from the conflict
of the past toward the future. That will be critical as
the peace process progresses in the Philippines and is
inevitably tested.
I also enjoyed the opportunity to hear the ideas and
attitudes of a variety of officials, development experts
and ordinary people about ways in which we can work
together to address the problem of global warming.
They are concerned about how measures to reduce
global warming might affect their hopes and plans for
development. I won't attempt here to go into all of the
concerns they raised. I understand their fears, but I
was struck by the great opportunities that exist to
achieve reductions in greenhouse gases in the process of
accomplishing their development goals, even without
formal global warming commitments.
Climate change could devastate many developing
countries. We have an enormously important
opportunity to help assure cleaner development in the
areas of the world where the greatest increases in
energy production and uses will take place. Japan will
be our ally in this effort.
Another key part of my portfolio will be to serve
as a lead liaison between the State Department and
USAID. I will be responsible for ensuring maximum
communication and coordination. I will also be
working on the Greater Horn of Africa Initiative.
I will also step in as needed to assume any of the
duties in Brian's portfolio.
Like Brian, I am taking advantage of opportunities
to communicate to the American public and to get
across the reasons why our foreign aid program is in
our national interest. In just these few months, I have
come to appreciate even more what Secretary Albright
meant when she said our foreign assistance program is
an indispensable tool of foreign policy for an
indispensable nation.
Trade, investment and economic growth are crucial, but those who find "trade not aid" a panacea
ignore some fundamental facts about our world.
As all of you are aware, early in the next century,
half of the world's population will be under age 20.
Sub-Saharan Africa, with 22 of the 30 poorest countries
in the world, has few countries with overall literacy
rates as high as 60 percent. One child in four dies
before reaching the age of five. Only half of the
children of primary school age are in school. Only half
of those who start will complete the primary grades.
I have enjoyed the opportunity already of seeing
what it means for USAID to be on the front-lines in the
battle to save the lives of these children. Our people
are helping to provide them hope, opportunity, the
chance to build better lives and to build stable,
peaceful, prosperous countries.
I have also been impressed by what I have learned
about the difference USAID is making in places I have
not yet had a chance to visit. For example, our work
to increase women's literacy in Nepal (where only 22
percent of the women were literate in 1991) has
resulted in raising the awareness of women's legal
rights -- not only among the women involved, but in the
larger society. Nepalese women who learned about
their basic legal protections as an outgrowth of the
literacy program took the lead in advocating that the
Nepalese Supreme Court overturn existing inheritance
laws because of gender bias -- and the Court agreed
with them and overturned those laws. The ultimate
effect of these changes will continue to play out for
decades and even generations to come.
The other day in one of his press briefings on
President Clinton's Africa trip, Brian said something
that really highlighted the need for legal assistance.
Lay people can understand the need for technical
assistance to craft legal responses to the genocide in
Rwanda in terms of trials, punishments and terms of
reconciliation and even forgivenness. But, as you well
know, such horrors have other legal ramifications the
rest of the world is rarely conscious of -- such as the
plight of women whose husbands have been killed.
Brian pointed out that half the mothers in the country
are now single parents. Yet existing laws do not allow
them to inherit or own property. In such situations,
legal reforms are not abstractions -- they are
emergencies. Justice for women is not some idealist's
frivolous notion -- it is a necessity for the survival of
the society.
You know how crucial democracy and laws and
constitutions that protect human rights and property
rights are to creating the conditions that allow foreign
investors to feel safe, and to increased trade.
Helping women in developing countries obtain
justice and fair treatment under the law is also
important to trade.
Critics like Robert Kaplan glibly recite the places
where the United States has sought to establish
democracies and justice which still have a long way to
go.
Some examples he offers of countries whose trade
and investment grew without democratic reforms and
openness have looked less convincing as the Asian
financial crisis has unfolded.
One thing that I knew already has become even
more abundantly clear since I came to USAID. This
Agency is criticized in proportion to the importance of
what it tries to do. This is not a perfect Agency, and
this is not a perfect world, and we are blamed for both.
We are working on the problems within our
Agency -- on teamwork and customer service and
results, on the NMS and the year 2000 problems.
Even more important, we are working on the
fundamental problems that will determine what kind of
world we will have in the 21st century. We are dealing
with vital issues -- from democracy to disasters to
sustainable development, from climate to credit to child
health, from education to economies, from hazardous
waste to wasted lives.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the
Congress last year that the one percent of the federal
budget spent on foreign affairs would determine 50
percent of the history. I think the work that you and
your colleagues in the field are doing will determine
how well MOST of that 50 percent turns out over the
longterm.
I said I would tell you a little bit about myself and
my impressions of USAID so far. Mostly, I came here
to listen to you, and to answer some of your questions.
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
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Last Updated on: July 18, 2001
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